


reunion

by orphan_account



Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: F/M, Old Friends, hot mess reader, mercenary FWBs, nonbinary reader, surprise it's smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:01:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23371348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: The Mandalorian does not strike you as a sentimental person. You are very sentimental, which is why you were more than eager to see the Mandalorian again.
Relationships: The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)/Reader
Comments: 2
Kudos: 32





	1. Chapter 1

You would say you have a bad feeling about this, but you already know what you’ve gotten yourself into. 

He asks to meet you in the Mos Eisley cantina, which makes you wonder how out of touch he is — no one really goes there anymore, except for the lifelong regulars, or fledgling mercenaries, or the occasional brave tourist. Later, you find out he’s trying to avoid attention for several reasons, but for now you puzzle over it, poking at the ice floating in your cocktail with a metal straw. The Mandalorian does not strike you as a sentimental person. You are very sentimental, which is why you were more than eager to see the Mandalorian again. 

He shows up obscenely late, striding in all business-as-usual — except his tattered cape gets caught in the door, and he has to yank it out. A few vaguely interested heads turn. That was the fun part about running with the Mandalorian, you remember; the room always hushed when he walked in, and as long as you were together nobody messed with you, most of the time. 

You notice a few things right away: he’s got on shiny new armor he’s clearly treating like shit, all scuffed up and coated in dust. He’s looking over his shoulder in a way that makes you instantly uneasy — is he in trouble? That must be why he came here; nobody cares. _Most_ of the time. 

“Mando, Mando, Mando,” you say, a little more brazen than you wanted, as you hop off the barstool. You’re near the end of your drink, tipsier than you thought you were. You whack his shoulder in a gesture of old-buddy camaraderie, but mostly you want to see if the plates are real Beskar — they are. 

“You haven’t heard about me,” he says, almost a question, but not really. 

“Strangely, my world does not revolve around you.” 

“Not even around the Guild.” 

“I’m freelance now,” you say. “Too much nasty business.” 

You think you hear a sigh through the modulator. Relief or exasperation, you’re not sure. “Well,” he says, "I’m looking for work.” 

“I should have known.” You rattle the ice in your drink, gesturing for another. “You’re broke and looking to mooch off my hard-earned contracts, is that it? Did that Imperial junker lose another cannon or what?"

You’re mostly kidding, but you’re stupidly disappointed. It’s not like the two of you were going to hang out or anything. Just then, the bartender comes by and takes your drink to freshen it up. The Mandalorian orders several dubiously-labeled ration bars sitting behind the counter, and two bottles of broth to go — probably one to inhale in the privacy of his ship and the other to save for later. He also pays for your next drink, to quietly prove he’s not completely strapped for cash. Classic Mando, you think. It’s still like talking to a rock, after all these years. 

“The _Razor Crest_ is in the shop,” he says. “If you have any leads, we can split the cut however you want. I’ll do twenty percent.” 

“I’m just fucking with you,” you say, after a minute. “I love guessing the look on your face.” He’s clearly not amused, but you go on: “I have a job. Some off-the-books stuff. But if you’re coming with me — we’re taking that gunship. Even if it _is_ falling apart. Alright?” 

He pauses, then shrugs. “Whatever you say.” 

“Can we go?” you ask. "I actually kind of hate it here.” 

“Why don’t you meet me in a little while,” he says, after a moment. “Bay three-five.” 

“I don’t appreciate all the cloak and dagger, you know,” you say. “Besides, I can’t go there — I owe Peli, like, two hundred credits.” 

“I’ll take care of it,” he says. 

“No you won’t,” you say. 

“I’ll take care of it.” 

You give him a look. Then you flag down the bartender and say: “I’ll take a growler of ale, too. On him.” 

* * *

You see Peli Motto and the Mandalorian talking from some distance, standing near the ramp of his ship. As you get closer, you realize they’re talking about someone — first you think it’s you, but then you realize they’re talking about a _him_. 

“He’s grown such a little personality,” she says. “Be careful with him!” 

“I am,” he says, embarrassed, like he’s being chewed out. 

“Here’s the sore loser in the flesh,” Peli says, once she notices you. You’re about to hand over the wager you skipped out on when she beat you at sabacc last month, but she shakes her head. “Consider yourself settled."

“Another game sometime,” you tell her. All the pit droids are blinking at you; you wave them off. 

"I don’t wanna see your face around here anymore, you hear me? ” she says to you. “As for _you_ …” She turns to the Mandalorian, tapping her face in the universal gesture for _I’m watching you._ “Take care of the precious cargo, alright?” 

“Right,” says Mando, disappearing into the hull. 

“So long, Peli,” you say as you climb the ramp, but the way she looks at you makes you think something is wrong, something even worse than the money — but then you’re inside, and it’s too late to ask. 

* * *

Sitting in the cockpit beside him, a growler of cold ale in your lap, you begin to explain the long trail you’ve been following for the last few months, involving a miner’s strike and the slumlord the union leaders want dead. You neglect to mention that the planet is in your home system, and you’ve got friends and cousins on the ground hoping this all shakes out. That’s just not how the two of you do things. He doesn’t ask about the sketchy shit you do to make a living. You never ask about the helm or the creed or what he had to do to earn it. You’ve already heard all the stories, some of which are probably true. 

You like to think that’s why he wanted to work with you again. You’re an old-fashioned scoundrel, and you drink too much, but you don’t ask questions, and the two of you work quickly. It’s just when other people were involved that things got complicated. 

It’s inhumanely hot on the mining planet, especially on your speeder bikes; eventually you stop riding in order to peel off the top half of your jumpsuit and tie the sleeves around your waist, your cotton undershirt patched with sweat. You guzzle some water from a canteen. Poor Mando, you think, stuck in all-black Beskar. It must be like a pressure cooker in there.

“I want this nice and easy,” you say to him, wiping dust off your goggles, “in-and-out.” You also neglected to tell him that you’re likely outmanned, and that stealth and speed will the name of the game here — you’re more of a long-range type of person, explosives usually, but for this occasion you have a silenced blaster hanging on your hip. 

The tracking fob takes you to the slumlord's bunker, accessible by an underground vent. You almost want to whoop in relief when the cool air hits your skin, but you stay quiet, sliding through the passages. Around a corner, you both see the back of several guards’ heads. And ore — tons and tons of expensive mineral ore, artfully arranged along the walls of the cavern. There’s a maglocked sliding door; you reach for your tool belt and quietly, quietly jimmy it open. Your tracking fob blinks silently. 

“Let’s go,” you whisper to the Mandalorian. He nods. The space is tight. You hear his breath in the modulator. 

The next moment goes by in a flash: the door slides open, you instantly trip some kind of alarm, and before you can even draw your blaster the Mandalorian has already shot your bounty in the head. “ _Now_ let’s go,” he says. 

Nice and easy. In and out. There are already footsteps down the hall, rifles clicking loudly. Fucking Mando, you think. Fuck fuck fuck. 

You make a break for it down the hallways. By the time you come back up the ladder, there are guards waiting for you. You fling yourself onto your bike, feeling blaster fire graze your ankles, bouncing off the cheap steel. You’re speeding away, barely looking behind you, but one of them nabs your engine, and you pitch forward and hit the rocks. 

* * *

The minute you wake up you know there’s a crack in your head. You can feel the dried blood on your cheek and near your eyelids. You move your eyes around the ceiling, and eventually put together that you’re in the storage brig of the _Razor Crest._ He must have dragged you onto his bike under fire.Thank fuck either of them are alive. 

You keep yelling “Mando,” hoping he’ll show up, but he doesn’t. You do equations in your head, recite card suits and random ship parts, and decide your brain’s not damaged, at least not significantly. You fall asleep again, and when you come to there’s a gloved hand holding your jaw, shaking you.

“Stay awake,” he says. 

“Should have had one of those things on,” you say, as a terrible joke, pointing to the helm with your chin. You can tell without even seeing his face he’s exhausted with you. You lay still as he sticks you with a medpak, even though you want to tell him it’s no good. 

“This should help with the pain,” he says. 

“Thank you, nurse droid,” you mutter. He puts a hand around your waist as he props you up against the wall. You clear your throat awkwardly. You’re not sure if he’s ever touched you, although you’ve definitely touched him. 

In the distance, you can hear gunships. “They’re looking for us,” you say. He nods. He hands you a damp rag to wipe off the blood, and then he’s gone. You mean to stay awake, but the hum of the engine puts you back to sleep. 


	2. Chapter 2

There’s something with you in your cot when you wake up, a warm little hand pressing right against your head wound. You shriek, and then the creature shrieks, and you’re in a standoff in the corner of the room when Mando comes in and gathers it up in his arms.

“Leave them alone,” he says to the thing, presumably talking about you. 

“It was trying to kill me,” you sputter, but then you get a decent look at the thing’s face and see how ridiculous that is. It’s cute, you suppose, in the way a baby womprat might be cute. “Why the hell was it—“ 

“Wait,” Mando says. He dangles the child out directly in front of you. It stares at you blankly, then puts its little hand back on your head. You almost scramble away, but he says: “Just stay still.” 

You can feel the crack in your skull fusing together, scar tissue growing back and smoothing over, dead skin coming back to life. You are fascinated, but mostly horrified. The child draws its hand back and yawns. 

“What the fuck,” you whisper, your chest pounding, as the Mandalorian bundles it back up. When he leaves with it over his shoulder, it's half asleep, adorably defenseless.

When he comes back, he hands you some rations and the jug of ale you left on his console. “You okay?” 

You reach up to touch your brow. It's smooth, but there’s still a phantom pain. “What did it do? I still feel..."

“It’ll go away.” 

“I don’t know if I can roll with a single dad,” you say, as a joke, but it comes out wrong. 

“It’s more complicated than that,” he says, as humorless as always, and sits on the edge of the cot. You look down at the ale. The jug is lighter than you remember it. 

“Did you drink this?” you ask. “Are you even allowed to do that?” 

“It’s frowned upon,” he says, flatly, “but there are no rules against it.”

You decide not to ask any more questions in case he gets touchy — this is the way, blah blah, and so on. Instead you fold your arms around yourself and say, blearily: “You kind of saved my life.” 

He leans back against the wall. “What was I going to do? Leave you there?” 

You look at him, wishing you could see his face. You’ve heard all the jokes, but there’s no way he’s not human. You saw all the undeniably human things hidden away in the ship: toothbrush, underclothes, straight razor, a comb. 

“Why didn’t you want me to see that thing?” you ask. 

“I have to protect him,” he says. 

“How do you know it’s a boy?” 

“I just know.” 

“Well, he could always change his mind,” you say, gesturing to yourself. 

“Mandalorians don’t have a gender hierarchy,” he says, growing defensive. 

“I know that already — look, whatever, man. You let Peli babysit, so it’s not like you’re keeping him a secret.” 

“He’s already in danger as long as he’s with me. I don’t want to expose him to any more.” 

“I’m not gonna hurt your kid!” you snap. “You just think I’ll get too invested. You’re never gonna let anybody in, are you?” 

“There are plenty of people who helped me with the kid. People I wouldn’t have made it without.” 

You can’t help but laugh. “I know you, Mando. You went out of your way to make sure none of them really knew you.” 

“There are plenty of things you don’t know,” he says, which only stings a little. 

“But I want to know. I bet they wanted to know, too.” 

“People are frivolous,” he says. 

“Maybe.” There’s an awkward silence in the air, a tension that usually doesn’t exist between the two of you. You break off a piece of the ration bar and chew, feeling it disintegrate like flavorless dust, and wash it down with some ale. 

“I should sleep,” you murmur. It’s a long ride back to Tatooine. 

“Wouldn’t hurt,” he says. Then he’s gone. 

* * *

You don’t sleep. You toss and turn and think about the conversation you just had, about the way the crack in your head is completely gone, just like that. About the way the Mandalorian put his hand around your waist. You are wondering when he looks at you, if he looks at you, if he looks at you at all. You don’t want to think about it, but it’s too late; your mind’s already gone there. 

You’re pretty sure Mandalorians and sex don’t compute — like everything else, it’s a solemn creed. You’ve seen him standing around kicking dust outside the massage parlors in Canto Bight while the other mercenaries cavorted inside. You saw that Twi’lek girl, Xi’an, hanging around him a couple times back in the day, and although he seemed completely uninterested, you said nothing where you would have usually made some snarky comment. You didn’t need any daggers pointed at you. 

But the two of you have had some strangely intimate moments. Like just now, or all the times you sat there in silence, or communicated without having to say a word. More than once you’d had too much to drink and brushed against him, a knee or an arm or something, hoping for a response but never getting anything. You can’t help thinking about it now, too. 

Finally, you drift off for a bit, and when you come to you realize the ship is in park, floating gently. You must be at some spaceport. Your back hurts from lying on the thin cot; you prop up on one elbow and rub at your temples, check the smooth spot on your forehead again. When you look up, he’s standing there in the doorway. 

“You creep,” you say, grinning at him. “Sit with me?” He joins you on the edge of the cot, like he did hours before. Finally, you say: “Sorry about earlier.” 

“For what?” 

You shrug. The two of you sit there a while, in silence.

“You know I’m not good at this,” he finally says. 

“At what?” 

“Talking.” 

You realize this is the most vulnerable thing he has ever said to you, and you’re a little embarrassed for him. But you won’t kick him when he’s down.

“Don’t worry about it." You sit up, and fiddle with the zipper on your jumpsuit. There’s light plating sewn inside the bodice that’s completely worn through; you cooked this outfit up in your engineering days, back before people were regularly firing blasters at you. 

He reaches over and raps you on your shoulder, almost like the way you did in the bar the other night, but it's so awkward you almost tremble for him. Is he…actually trying to make physical contact with you? This is the second time it’s happened now. He’s gone soft, you think, raising a child and all. Maybe he knows you’re right, that he’s starved for contact, real connection. Maybe you’ve pinned him down — maybe he’s pinned you down, too.

Something in the air tells you he knows what he's doing. You almost move away to pace, suddenly full of adrenaline, but he grabs onto your wrist.

“What’s gotten into you, Mando?” you ask. 

He shoots back: “What are we doing?” 

“I don’t know,” you say, obviously flustered. You look him over, knowing full well he’s looking right back at you. You still wish you could see him — you hate that he has the power. But it keeps drawing you back, again and again, even if you should know better. “What are _you_ doing?” 

“Waiting for you to make up your mind,” he says, and it nearly knocks you over. He sees right through you, like you always suspected. You idiot. 

“I’ve already decided,” you say. 

“Yeah?” He’s still holding your wrist. You still don’t quite believe this is happening, but like the saying goes, don’t look a gift blurrg in the mouth. Or maybe it was “don’t shoot a gift blurrg in the face.” You clear your throat, your chest still pounding. 

“It’s okay,” he tells you, and lets go of your wrist. 

"Let me just,” you start to say, but you trail off as you put your hands on his shoulders and calmly, calmly slide into his lap. “It’s okay. It’s okay. I don’t know what I’m doing, I just—” 

“You know exactly what you’re doing.” His voice is smooth, calm. He pulls you in quickly, which surprises you. You fit well against him, even with the armor pressing against your thighs. You realize then that this isn’t just some joke; that you need this, you need it like you need another hole in your head, and he’s more than willing to give it to you. 

You remember how he took care of the drinks and the settled debts, trying to buy your companionship because he doesn’t know what else you value. Because you won’t let anyone in either — that’s what you have most in common. You already know you’re a rotten person, and the Mandalorian is, too. But there’s something else beneath him, something warmer and deeper at his center, and it drove you crazy trying to unearth it, to the point you had to stop. And then he waltzes back into your life and has you like putty in his hands in twenty-four hours flat. 

You kind of expect him to be terrible at this. It’s not like you can kiss him, which is weird, but you can hear him breathing hard through the modulator as he undoes your belt. You wiggle your jumpsuit down as far as you can without pulling away from him, and pull your undershirt over your head. 

“Aren’t you,” you say, leaning into his hand as he slides it over your underwear, “aren’t you supposed to be — celibate, or something —“ 

“That’s an old rule.” He pulls off his gloves. You were right: human hands. Clean-looking, warm brown, covered in scars and calluses. He slips his hand in your underwear, feels the slickness between your legs indifferently, and then rocks two fingers against your clit so hard you almost jump out of your spine, cursing loudly. He puts a finger over your lips, and you shudder. You drag his hand over your throat, down your chest, making him twist your nipple, hard. You feel his cock twitch against your leg. This is crazy, you think. You’re both crazy. 

“Let me,” you say, clawing at his belt. He pulls your hands away and undoes it himself, as you kick off the rest of your clothes. You’re completely naked in his lap, his armor sticking to your inner thighs. His cock slides right up against you, but he holds off. You should have known better. He never wants to do things the easy way. 

You press against him. He rubs you roughly with his fingers, then brings it up to your mouth so you can suck on them, tasting yourself. “I don’t like playing games, Mando,” you say, when he pulls his fingers away, cupping your jaw. “Fuck me and get it over with, so we can never talk about it again.” 

He strikes your cheek lightly, somewhere between a light pat and a slap, and you can't help but laugh, even as it makes your cunt seize up. Fucking Mando, you think. Not even when you get him in bed can he stop taking himself seriously.

“I’ll give you what you need,” he says. Then he pushes inside you so fast you let out a genuine yelp, and he covers your mouth and starts going in tight, short thrusts, holding you in place by the small of your back. You’re trying to be quiet, but you’re making these sounds you hardly recognize. He lies back, pulling your body against his, going deeper. You grip the edge of the cot, resting your other hand over his helmet, smearing the glass and steel.

You come once just riding him, and a second time with his hand, as you’re collapsed on top of him, feeling him go soft. You notice your handprint on his helm, the metal stuck to your cheek. He’s breathing like he’s some kind of wild animal you just shot down. He makes a quiet noise as you pull yourself out of his lap. 

You want to say _something_. Just _something._ But instead you just laugh under your breath, slipping back into your clothes. He lets you lean against his side as you both regain your breath. After what feels like forever, you let him detach himself from you and go back upstairs.

By sunrise you’re back home. Nice and easy, you think. Like it never happened. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i originally tagged this as a Slow Burn but it's not really a slow burn if they fuck in the second chapter now is it


End file.
